Reference no: EM132215601

TESCO PLC: Leveraging Global Knowledge

Tesco PLC, the United Kingdom-based retailing giant had been in Asia for a little over a decade and sales and profits were already comfortably outstripping those in the UK and other Tesco areas. Yet it was clear that every Asian market was unique. Thailand, Malaysia, and South Korea had been great successes, yet Tesco had failed completely in Taiwan and operations in Japan were not going well at all.

Tesco’s international expansion strategy has responded to the need to be sensitive to local expectations in other countries by entering into joint ventures with local partners, such as Samsung group in South Korea, also making sure to appoint significant portion of local personnel to management positions as part of their internationalization strategy, referred to as the TESCO Project.

Questions:

1- The United States and France are more culturally similar to the UK than are Thailand and Malaysia, yet TESCO failed in the former two and has been highly successful in the latter two. How might you explain this difference?

2- What is the role of global teams in sharing best practices across a firm’s global operations? What advice would you give to make the teams more effective?

3- How would Tesco’s business model translate into policies of recruitment, training and development, and career management across the Group?